Odd Bits

What Kind of History Buff Are You?

May 17, 2013

We’ve been hanging out together at History in the Margins for two years now: come rain, come shine, come crazy deadline schedule. With a few exceptions*, I assume you have a basic interest in history or you wouldn’t keep coming back. But just what kind of history buff are you? I’m hoping you’ll answer a [...]

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Prehistoric Redheads

May 14, 2013

Like every other redhead I know, I have a mental list of notable gingers from history:  Richard the Lion-Hearted, Christopher Columbus, Elizabeth I, Thomas Jefferson, Lucille Ball…*  It’s a natural defense against phrases like “red-headed stepchild” and that popular playground taunt, “I’d rather be dead than red on the head.” ** Not speaking for anyone [...]

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Speaking of book storage…

May 2, 2013

For the last five years I’ve visited New York City in April to attend the American Society of Journalists and Authors annual meeting. Every year I’ve made a pilgrimage to Fortitude and Patience, the stone lions that stand outside the public library on 5th Avenue. This year I finally went inside–as part of an ASJA [...]

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Book-hoarding, 10th Century Style

April 25, 2013

Anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time with me in recent months, whether in real life or in some virtual space, has probably heard me bemoan the state of my office bookshelves.  As the photo above attests, they overflow. Loaded two deep and stacked rather than shelved, there is still not enough room. Worse, [...]

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Black Athena

March 28, 2013

A recent exchange with a slightly disgruntled reader of Mankind: The Story of All of Us * led me to pull a book off the shelf that I hadn’t looked at for several years: the first volume of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena . Sub-titled The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Bernal’s book was a smack [...]

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The Year Without Summer: “Eighteen hundred and froze to death”

March 11, 2013

Historian William K. Klingaman and meteorologist Nicholas P. Klingaman combine forces in The Year Without Summer: 1816 And The Volcano That Darkened The World And Changed History. Working in a vein similar to Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, the Klingamans weave together modern scientific explanations, nineteenth-century scientific (and religious) speculations, and historical events into a [...]

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Word(s) With a Past: Two Bits

February 23, 2013

One of the favorite cheers for my junior high school’s football team went “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for our team stand up and holler.” It made no sense to me, but neither did football. When the rest of the Trojan fans stood up and hollered, I stood up and hollered. [...]

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England Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty

February 12, 2013

As I may have mentioned before, I’m happily bopping around in the long eighteenth century*. In the process I’m stumbling across all kinds of stuff that makes my brain fizz with ideas. Some of it I’m hoarding. But some of it is just too good not to share Today’s case in point: Admiral Sir Home [...]

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Déjà vu All Over Again: Fighting About Richard III

February 10, 2013

Some stories never die. For years, those who think Richard III ordered the murder of his nephews (aka the Princes in the Tower) and those who believe he was the victim of a Tudor smear campaign* have continued a low-grade specialist pissing match. With the discovery and authentication of Richard’s bones, the battle has moved [...]

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On The Map

January 15, 2013

Speaking of maps, as I believe we were, I recently spent several happy days with a book that straddles the intersection between cartography and history. Simon Garfield, author of the bestselling Just My Type, once again takes a subject that seems the province of a small group of enthusiasts and opens it for a larger [...]

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